


c'mon you goddamn stars

by razbliuto



Category: Final Fantasy X Series, Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drama, Gen, Humor, minimal alive auron in this. mostly auron-grieving. i'm sorry., rikku being rikku
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:33:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28340946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/razbliuto/pseuds/razbliuto
Summary: Post FFX-2, KH crossover. The Heartless invade, Spira dies, and she meets a dead ghost in Traverse Town. Excuse the supreme lack of punchline. — Legendary Guardian Superstar Hottie Rikku, forever.
Relationships: Auron & Rikku (Final Fantasy X Series)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	c'mon you goddamn stars

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this... around two years ago and i've decided to just post it rather than let it wither away in my drafts. this is absolutely not satisfying at all as a oneshot, but it's marked complete for now.
> 
> inspired by guardian1’s but that was in another country. (it's been like 15 years and i'm still not over how traverse town yuffie - whomst i also love very much - was originally supposed to have been rikku. sometimes you just have to write out your feelings ok!!!)

Auron is buying her a popsicle. So, that’s weird.

It’s weird because he’s—dead. It’s weird because he’s asking her what flavor she wants, and she tells him to check if they have the coconut-guava swirl from Kilika, and he goes along with it to humor her, his voice as dry as woodchips. This isn’t Spira.

He plods back to her, boots clomping and his heavy-duty katana banging against his back. Auron is alive and here and he’s _not wearing_ _sunglasses_ and that’s sort of a relief because what sort of functional value do sunglasses provide for ghosts, huh? She means to prod him about that, but then he’s holding a popsicle to her face and she stares at his hand so long he grunts, "What."

“I’m double-checking if you have all the same scars,” Rikku replies, investigating his big callused old man fingers.

He slips off his katana and sits next to her, on the sloop over the Item Shop. “Like you remember.”

“I _could_ remember,” she says defiantly, and takes the popsicle. It’s so blue, it reminds her of Besaid. She’s supposed to use it to ice her forehead for her massive splitting headache, and she complies for all of five seconds before she unwraps and bites into it.

(There’s a guy named Cid in Traverse Town, and he is so completely unlike her dad, her Cid, but he smokes like a chimney and stomps around with delirious swagger and he’s filthy up to the elbows in grease. Rikku can’t look at him without feeling dizzy, and she doesn't want to _do_ that because he’s a nice guy who’s teaching her about Gummi Ships and synthesizing and anyway, that’s not what the conversation’s about—

—there’s a girl with a pink bow in her hair who Rikku’s never met in her life but smiles like a martyr just like Yunie and there’s this hot silent Leather Pants-type fella in town with painstakingly gelled hair and all she could think of when she saw him was _oh my god! Someone cloned Paine!_ She wants to laugh until her stomach explodes and all her guts spill out in ways that’d make Lulu’s eye twitch—

New Cid, not-her-Cid, Cid Highwind of the _Planet_ said they all got their own stories of the Heartless. But she didn’t know they were called the Heartless until then. She’d called them Sinspawn buggers. Or the second coming of Sin. Death. _Dra Aht_. The End.)

“So,” Auron says, this new, alive Auron who isn’t wearing sunglasses. Who’s younger. Younger like the age he died. Well, the first time.

She wipes her mouth and gets sea-salt all over her gloves.

Okay, Rikku. Deep breaths.

* * *

There are little promises Rikku makes to herself.

Like, she’ll call dad once a week. She won’t spend all her gil on hair products and cute boots. Next time Brother challenges Tidus to a duel over Yuna’s honor, she’ll lob one of Lulu’s chickens at his face.

(Lulu, raising chickens! In a dress tied together with less than three belts, black-painted toes stuffed in _sandals_. Sin ain’t got nothing on this.)

She promises no more crying. Happiness is the rarest steal in Spira; like gathering Farplane Wind or catching raindrops in the desert. So there’s no sense in spending all her happy moments half-blind with tears and bawling so loudly Paine kicks her in the rear.

The village is heady with the smells of fish sauce, lemongrass, curry. Tidus and Yuna are gathered in the center, sitting on blankets, looking absolutely fricken radiant in the firelight. He’d knocked the ever-loving wind outta her when she and Paine jumped down from the Celsius, and did the same to Wakka, spinning the big guy around on the sand with the rest of the Aurochs laughing. Lulu glared at him when he came close, but then allowed a light peck on the cheek. But it’s all nothing compared to how he hugged Yuna, and her holding his face in her hands as though he might break.

Brother’s making murder eyes at Tidus, and Cid is trying to shove more booze into everyone’s hands like an inappropriate bawdy geezer. Rikku makes her way over, not about to let her family hog all the fun.

Tidus beams when he sees her and noogies her head. “Did you get taller?”

She breaks out of his hold, blowing a raspberry. “Yunie! Your boyfriend is a complete juvenile!”

Yuna hides her giggle behind her hand. “You two _are_ the same age now.”

Tidus shoots Yuna a repentant look. He really _hasn’t_ aged a day, Rikku observes, maneuvering close. They’re both seventeen, and it feels weird not being younger than him. He couldn’t have come back as a Zombie, right? Rikku nervously palms a Phoenix Down, then thinks of something more important.

“No one else came with you, huh?” she says cheerily, except her voice catches on the last syllable. They look down and wow, awkward.

“My old man, Yuna’s old man, Auron—they’re all partying in the Farplane.” He glances at Yuna. “I don’t remember much about… being dead, but—but I remember that. They’re happy.”

Yuna gets that _look_ in her mismatched eyes, her short hair fanning around her cheeks and glowing all soft-like from the fire.

Rikku thinks _aw geez,_ and leaves them be. She grabs a bowl of green curry and plops down next to Paine, who’s sitting by herself. The warrior has always looked faintly uneasy in Besaid, among yapping village dogs and overly friendly grandmas.

“If it’s such a happy place, why’d he come back?” Paine mutters. She didn’t say it unkindly.

“Tidus… never really got to experience a _life_ life, you know? He doesn’t have anyone in the Farplane—except for Jecht and his mom, I guess, but everyone else is still here. He wasn’t really even alive in the first place.” Rikku makes a disgusted face. “Ugh, he’s like, barely a day old! Yunie, you big ol’ nasty!”

Paine rolls her eyes, but softens briefly as she glances back at the couple. “They seem good for each other.”

Her chest wells with something sickeningly mushy.

“For two yucky-mucky lovebirds,” Rikku adds, and runs over to Tidus and upends a bottle of Phoenix Down over his head.

Yuna gasps. Tidus splutters, wholly and completely not zombiefied.

“ _Happy birthday_!” Rikku shrieks and hides behind Paine, who’s busy eating Rikku’s curry and does absolutely nothing to protect her.

* * *

He left behind a multitude of katana, back on the Fahrenheit. She sifted through it, after, when the fight was over and they’d all huddled up inside, quiet with grief and bruises and more grief. When they landed in Besaid, she stumbled off the ramp clutching an armful of pointy swords and bracers stained with fiend guts. Yuna had clambered after her, clumsily holding onto the Brotherhood. They stuck them next to the waterfall by the village, and Yuna had set down a blitzball beneath the watertouched sword.

“Heya, sleepyhead,” Rikku greets, rounding the narrow trail between ancient, broken machina. The secret hollow is unkempt with wild grass. She bounces to Auron’s collection of oversized toothpicks.

Small green vines had begun creeping up on the blades. The spot on the earth where Wakka had helped shove them in is now patchy with small flowers. She presses the toe of her boot against the soft, wet earth.

“So, Tidus came back. I know you didn’t tag along. But I’ll keep watching the ocean. Just in case, ‘cause I’m not sure you ever knew how to swim. When Tidus came back, you could’ve just been—drowning down there like limbless sea kelp, resurrected and then gone _kaput_ , back to the Farplane.”

Probably not. An easy death, a death that ain’t all about screwing destiny and goin’ down swinging, will never be his ending. And Auron already had a great ending. Blazing like the sun, stomach full with victory, tired in that good, _good_ way.

She hadn’t really—understood until the very end, when Yuna started dancing and the pyreflies came from everywhere, and he just—left. Both of them, leaping off the Fahrenheit. She’d felt so stupid. They’d been talking about saving Yuna the whole damn time, and in the end, it was him and Tidus they should’ve worried about. But Auron did what he always did; he did what he wanted, then left.

Rikku scoffs quietly. “You were _such_ a cliché; I hope you know that.”

It’s been two years, and she’s sure he’s sick of hearing her chew him out. If he’s listening at all.

Checking her pockets, Rikku pops the cork off of a stolen pint of Brother’s strongest cactus-whiskey. She douses Auron’s katana with Al Bhed’s finest and presses a light, chaste kiss atop a sword. Some people just gotta exist on the edge of brokenness. They gotta die on that edge, too.

She hears voices behind her. “Rikku?”

Yuna and Tidus come brushing through the forest. “He wanted to say hi,” Yuna says, smiling at Rikku and nudging Tidus forward.

“Here it is.” Rikku waves her hands with a flourish. “Far enough for some peace and quiet, but still close enough to be around family.”

He blinks, falters, Brotherhood’s ribbon whispering between his fingers. “This is my spot, huh.”

“We kept it nice and pretty for you.” Yuna bumps her arm against his, and Rikku watches, feeling somewhat lonely.

Tidus looks out over the small grassy cliffside, where beneath them sleeps the village and the palm trees swaying in the breeze. “Good pick. I love it.” His gaze finds the katana and a small smile tugs on his mouth. “Hey, Auron.”

Leaving them to their alone time, Rikku scampers outta there.

She feels restless. She heads towards to the beach, aimlessly walking around in the tide. Paine finds her there soon enough, tearing off a sea hibiscus from her hair that a granny ostensibly forced on her, and they mope on the sand together.

It is a fact they silently acknowledge: Yuna is staying on Besaid. Yuna is happy. Whereas, the two of them…

A little while later, Yuna spies her and Paine from the forest, and joins them, and then they’re all laying on the sand and watching the ferry to Luca drift gently by the pier against the setting sun. It feels like they’re waiting for something, and Rikku swallows, determined to draw out the silence for as long as possible until Paine says, “So, anyway, I’m off,” and points at the ferry.

“Paine!” Rikku shrieks, springing up so fast she kicks sand all over the other girl. Yuna jumps, too. “You big stinker!” she hollers. “This was supposed to be _my_ dramatic exit!”

“So soon?” Yuna asks, before the warrior can grab Rikku in a headlock and make her shout _Paine is my glorious superior! Have mercy!_ She’s staring at them both, eyes very wide, hands twisting together. A prayer though no gods were there to listen, but old habits die hard. Rikku can’t help but feel guilty.

“The wind is calling, Yunie,” she says, and kisses her cousin’s cheek. “You’ll forgive me for leaving you to poopy-diaper duty, right?”

“Only if you visit lots, both of you,” Yuna sniffles firmly, and punches her on the arm very gently.

“We’ll annoy you forever and ever,” Rikku swears.

“If you ever need someone to drag her away, give me a call,” Paine tells Yuna.

The three of them glance at each other, and Yuna smiles first. Rikku giggles. Paine looks skyward, her mouth twisting in a smirk.

“I can’t wait to see you change Vidina’s diaper,” Rikku informs Paine, who gives Yuna a very quick one-armed hug and immediately pretends that never happened and goes walking off to the pier. “You’d super mega _suck_ at it.”

“At least I wouldn’t scream and toss the baby into the sink.”

“ _Al Bheds are taught to swim very young_! I had a _master plan_!”

“Later, Rikku,” she says, without looking back.

The Celsius is waiting in the ocean. Rikku runs and when the water climbs to her knees, she dives.

When she scales onto the ramp, a long and high _whistle_ sings through the air. She looks back at the beach, where Yuna has stopped waving and is whistling with two fingers in her mouth. In the distance, a whistle from the village answers back. And then Yuna turns, because she isn’t the girl who watches people leave anymore. None of them are.

Rikku will come back to Besaid in a week, to pick up half of her family and say a proper bye-bye to the other half. But for now, she takes off into the sky alone and races the sunset as it falls across the ocean.

She’s only seventeen, quick and agile, and life is coming too fast for her to slow down. So she won’t. Rikku adds that to her lists of promises, next to _eat a million brownies_ and _make someone make me brownies_. She lifts Brother’s bottle of Al Bhed nog. There’s still a mouthful left.

“To the Gullwings,” she says to the empty cockpit, and is sure Auron would approve.

It burns down her throat, and if her eyes water a little, well, that’d just be the whiskey.

* * *

There is much work to be done.

Shinra’s been hanging out with Rin to develop new machina tech, but Rikku’s still got Brother and Buddy and Cid. She can go days in the air without hearing a speck of Spiran, with all the Al Bhed insults hurled at each other like gatling guns. She’s not alone, not really, but it still takes some getting used to. (She and Brother conspire together to get rid of Cid, because there’s nothing quite as effective as parental strife that helps siblings bond. They drop him off at Luca one day and make a spit-pact to conveniently forget to pick him up.)

She bumps into Paine more than a handful of times. Rikku likes it when Paine lets her drag her to the hot springs on Mt. Gagazet. Once, Yuna and Tidus come along, and they make sure to bring gifts to Kimahri, who is ever taciturn but always listens to their stories of Besaid and Lulu and Wakka and their horrid little monster. Rikku’s kidding—she _loves_ Vidina, but tysh, he can projectile vomit like a _fiend_.

Kimahri pats her on the head and rumbles about how happy he is for them, and were it not for the absence of a dry chuckle in a red coat, it almost feels like home again.

Tidus and Yuna, once they’ve spent a year in the comfort of Besaid, decide to travel and see Sinless Spira. They live in Luca for a while, where Rikku swings by every so often and crashes on the couch. The Besaid Aurochs spend a season there training for the tournament, and Yuna tries to take it easy until she invariably gets involved as a diplomat for all the city leaders. Girl wasn’t born for the sidelines, _no siree_.

Rikku’s so freaking proud of them.

They return to Besaid soon enough, but she secretly approves that they haven’t settled down _completely_ yet. They’re both still so young, and sometimes they fight over stupid shit. They’re learning to _be_ together.

It’s… nice, watching them. A little lonesome, too.

She maybe kisses Gippal once or twice. Okay, more than once or twice.

But this… thing they have never lasts long. He’s always making a stand for something, and, well. Rikku doesn’t wanna stand—she wants to _run_. She wants to wander the sky and the sea and make ugly mud angels all over Spira. So she says bye-bye to him more than once or twice, and watches shooting stars on the crystal dirt of Macalania Woods, among the dying ruins of Shiva’s dreams.

Settling down is hard for Rikku. It’s not just that she’s an Al Bhed, used to carving out temporary spaces for herself along the ugly barren edges of the known world. It’s just that—she used to think she’d marry young and pop out lots of spiral-eyed babies, so they’d be able to take care of each other and Home when she left for the Farplane. But Sin is dead, and so are all the gods, and she knows now: she likes the wind and the sand and the sea better than anything else.

For now, it’s good to be busy, stay active. So she sphere-hunts and fiend-hunts and keeps as sharp as her daggers.

Unlike some of the other spheres, Rikku never quite gave up on the Dark Knight or the Samurai. The red haori feels more comfortable than it should be, and she isn’t so clumsy with Masamune anymore. 

She doesn’t really know why it came with the Dark Knight when her own Godhand never returned for her. It feels awfully solid for a memory. She talked about it to Yuna once, as they cleaned Ochu slime off of Masamune and Caladbolg (while Paine viciously smacked a fiend with her White Mage rod somewhere in the background).

“We all want to be close to our memories,” Yuna had said.

( _memories are nice_

 _but that’s all they—_ )

Rikku makes new memories, because that what the Al Bhed do. Not like Yu Yevon, archbishop of crazy, clinging to life with his dreams. It’s all good and well to remember the dead, but when they’ve let their candles burn out so yours can flicker on, you gotta live as hard as you can, as bright as you can.

No one understands that like the Al Bhed. No one.

Her new memory is Gippal; Gippal’s pretty hair and his wicked tongue and, when he takes his eyepatch off, his old burn where his right eye should be. It’s alright, everything’s alright, until he lazily opens his good eye and strokes the side of her face and murmurs, “What took us so long?” And then Rikku doesn’t know what she wants.

“I can’t stay,” she blurts out.

“Yeah, I know,” he accepts easily, throwing his arm over her bare hip. “Why don’t I come with? Or are you really gonna make me chase you all over Spira?”

Her face burns. She buries it in his chest. “Ugh. Don’t be weird.”

She feels him rise and fall with laughter.

“I don’t want to get in the way,” she says plaintively, “of you and your other girlfriends.”

“I’m not all _rud cred_ , ya know,” he teases, and then the humor disappears, turns serious. “I’m not seeing anyone. Even if I had the time, I wouldn’t.”

“You have time for me.”

Gippal shrugs, tracing circles on her hip. “Well.”

“You sound different,” Rikku accuses, running her fingers along his scruffy jaw. He looks different, too; leaner and rougher around the edges, older. It was difficult to see in the darkness last night, but here, lying down with bright-Bikanel sun coming in from the window, it can’t be more obvious.

He observes her. “Who are you thinking of?”

She kisses him before he can make her reply, and then runs away to Besaid, tucks her head on Lulu’s lap as she braids her hair, and dreams only about the future, never one-eyed men.

* * *

Five years into the Eternal Calm, the water of Macalania Woods is still sweet and teeth-numbingly cold.

The forest isn’t half of what it used to be, and shrinks every day. Rikku estimates it maybe has another year before everyone starts referring to it in the past tense. Its death is a long, agonizing whimper. Which is probably a metaphor for something, she figures.

Rikku shakes off her teenage years. She never actually thought she’d make it to twenty. She always figured she’d get eaten by a fiend before then, or get her brains fried by broken machina. But it happens: she’s twenty, and she’s _hot_ at twenty, and confident enough that she doesn’t wear hip-riding thongs anymore. Sometimes she can’t believe how much her younger self suffered for fashion. They dig into _everywhere_.

(It catches her, a little. Whenever she finds her reflection, without the baby fat, a sharper chin, wider shoulders. She’s still a little startled. Time is passing, and Yunie and Tidus will soon get married and have chubby, bluegreen-eyed babies, and she’s going to grow older and older until she’s older than all her dead.

And that’s that, really.)

With nothing better to do, some of the ex-devout start going on their own pilgrimages, walking the world in the same path as the Grand Summoner Yuna, Bringer of the Eternal Calm. Along the way, they carve names on memorials for the ones they’ve lost. Big, stone tablets, etched with teeny tiny writing. From Kilika to the Calm Lands, and some even trek across the desert to pray at the skeletal ruins of Home. Non-Al Bheds, praying for Yevon’s heathens. Rikku would’ve laughed, if she hadn’t seen Cid get all weepy-faced and blustering about sand in his eye.

It’s about something greater than praying, she knows, but it still stings in a funny little way she can’t describe, watching Yevon’s ex-disciples walk on the sandy fields of her ancestors.

Cid berates her to visit Little Home in Luca. It’s nothing like Old Home, but it’s something; a huge district and a half, filled with Al Bhed voices and Al Bhed food and green spiral eyes. Cid used to roar _we can’t let Home die just because we have no more use for it_ , until Rikku smacks him with a frying pan and yells back _great, now you’ve made Brother cry!_ But he gets it now.

The Al Bhed don’t need the desert anymore. The Al Bhed have the rest of the world now, wholly and fully Spiran.

A whisper of a rumor comes from Guadosalam, something about moving darkness, and a flickering light in the shape of a keyhole appearing in the Farplane. Rikku hears about it in passing. She still avoids the Farplane like toxic muck, so there’s not much point in investigating.

The change creeps up slowly, so slow that barely anyone notices.

“What does that look like to you?” Yuna asks softly one night. She points up, her finger against the constellations.

“Where?” Rikku asks. Sitting next to Yuna on the beach, Tidus also peers up.

“There. Look hard.”

“Um.” Rikku squints, then frowns. “Like a star going out, I guess.”

“Maybe the fayth are up there,” Tidus suggests, and they look at him. “Just behind the stars. Watching over Spira.”

“How poetic,” Yuna teases, and he sticks his tongue out, making her laugh.

“So if a star’s going out, does that mean the fayth are dying all over again?” Rikku asks.

Yuna clasps her hands behind her back and Tidus tilts his head, and they say nothing in contemplation. Yuna doesn’t mention it again, but it doesn’t matter since Rikku is light-headed from all the coconut ale and searching for a star tinted red around the edges and distinctly grumpy-looking. Soon, she forgets all about it. Though when morning comes and she looks out on Cid’s balcony in Little Home, all the cramped, lamp-lit alleyways and humming machina beneath, she thinks, _the world feels smaller_.

Like always, the change is slow.

* * *

Until it isn’t.

* * *

“ _Rikku_ ,” Paine says sharply. “ _Fly south. Wherever you are, fly as south as you can. Go over the ocean. Don’t pass over Mt. Gagazet or the Calm Lands. Go to Besaid if you can. Go now._ ”

Rikku is hunting around the machina ruins of Moonflow when she gets the call. Paine speaks before she can say _hello, welcome to Rikku’s scantily-clad scavenging business_ , and she just… blinks.

“Paine—Paine, what’s going on?”

But the other woman has already hung up, and Rikku stares at her comm. She thinks of Full Throttle and Paine on her bad days cleaving a Chimera in two because it interrupted her morning tea. Whatever it is, it’s nothing Paine can’t handle. She straps some rusty machina generators to her back and drags them to the Celsius.

It takes a little jostling for Buddy to wake up from his midday nap and a hard smack for Brother when he whines that he’s already made plans to blitz. They compromise and land a little further south, in Luca. They make good time; they land at dusk, as all the lights in the city start flickering on.

Rikku buys a dragonfruit popsicle from a vendor under the statue of the High Summoner Yuna. She stretches out on her cousin’s enormous stone feet like a lazy cat. Green-eyed stray, wandering all over Spira, never fully home.

It’s only when Brother calls out to her in harsh Al Bhed, _Rikku, kad ujan rana_ —that she leaves her comfy spot, scratching an itch on her butt, and wanders over to the growing crowd standing before the big CommSphere screens.

Live-feed videos are coming in from Bevelle. It’s something—dark and pulsing, crawling and seething, like a tidal wave, gorging themselves upon the flags of New Yevon and swarming into windows. It looks like an army of ants, or locusts, devouring everything in their path. The towers are smoking, and the ground shakes violently as some of the less fortified buildings came crumbling down. Bright flames of burning buildings appear in the pulsating darkness. A CommSphere screen cuts out, followed by another, and another.

 _We stopped Sin_ , she thinks, bits of popsicle dribbling out of her mouth. _We stopped the spiral of death._

The Samurai dressphere knocks against her hip. There were so _many_ who died to stop—

More people rush into the crowd. They are heading to watch the screens; they are heading the wrong way. She grabs Brother and Buddy, and lurches through the crowd, shouting at the top of her lungs for everyone to leave, to head south _right now_.

Looking back, survival during those first few days depended on who moved the fastest, who understood the fastest. It was thanks to Paine that Rikku knew where to go, and she thinks about that later, shivering, sandwiched between Brother and Buddy on the deck of the Celsius.

One by one, the news stop coming in.

Overnight, Bevelle goes dark.

* * *

When it started, nobody understood what was going on. Nobody really _got it_ until much later. It looked like a hail of Sinspawn. It looked like a darkness spell gone haywire. Vegnagun’s revenge. But whatever it was, it still seemed like something… defeatable.

They hadn’t known anything.

She remembers that night on Besaid, before it had all gone to shit. The sticky humidity, the perfume of tamarind flowers. Wakka and Tidus patrolling the village, the light from Yuna’s hut still on as she and Brother and Buddy listen to the news coming in and call whoever they can reach. After Lulu hands Vidina off to Auntie Rikku (who’s meant to put Vidina to bed, which honestly speaks volumes about the mental state of everyone else), she stands sentinel on the cliff, scanning the ocean with fire magic dancing around her.

“What’s Mama and Papa doing?” Vidina asks Rikku as she rolls him into a blanket burrito, whistling jauntily.

She tosses him on the bed like a blitzball and catches him again before he can bounce into the dresser and die all over Lulu’s nice furs. “They’re keeping the village safe,” Rikku explains, tucking the three-year-old in properly. “Your ma and pops will be back soon.”

“Is Sin back?” Vidina’s got Wakka’s hot-pepper hair and honey-brown skin, but he’s all of his mother’s solemnity and quiet dark eyes and pursed lips.

Rikku leans her chin on her palm, appraising him. She doesn’t know when she first heard of Sin, because Sin had been everywhere; it was like everyone came out of the womb with the knowledge of death.

“I don’t think so, but if it is Sin, we’ll defeat it again. Lulu and Wakka are _mad_ strong, you know? They’re stronger than any Sin there is.” Vidina stares at her, eyes bright, and Rikku leans into her little audience. “Yeah, they wiped Sin’s _ass_ back in the day. I felt practically embarrassed for it, I mean, geez! The rest of us—me, Auntie Yunie, and your Uncles Tidus, Kimahri, and Auron had nothing to do. We were all watching from the bench, knitting sweaters and picking our noses.”

He giggles, small feet kicking under the blanket.

“So we’re not gonna worry, okay?”

Vidina nods and closes his eyes. “ _Kuuthekrd_ , Auntie.”

She kisses his forehead. “Dream sweet, bugaboo.”

After that, Rikku takes her daggers and slips out to the edge of the village and climbs up the thousand-year-old machina, surefooted even with just the moon lighting her way. Jungle leaves slip past her elbows, wet with night dew.

“Been a while,” Rikku greets. “Life is craaazy busy for a superstar. All the adoring fans. You know how it is.”

The Brotherhood is gone, back in Tidus’ care. This is just Auron’s glade now.

She sits down, cross-legged. The swords drip starlight, gleaming darkly.

“It’s that time of the year again,” she tells him, brushing her fingers over the dandelions. “The world is probably ending. This is getting super boring, you know? Write something original for once!” Rikku yells up at the sky, then settles. “We don’t—we don’t know where Kimahri is,” she says, haltingly. “Wakka and Lulu finally get their own kid to raise, and, and Yunie and Tidus are already working on their retirement plans and—”

She breaks off, screwing her eyes shut. She shakes her head, the beads in her hair clinking together, and channels her best Auron. Her inner noble badass, grizzled ronin, Death-Seeker Aficionado.

“I can’t let anything bad happen to them. I won’t. I helped defeat Sin _and_ Vegnagun, right? That’s two-for-two. I’m totally on a winning streak here. So just keep working on your beauty sleep. We’ll handle it. That’s what Legendary Guardians do.” She points to the swords, then at herself. “You and me.”

Rikku used to poke fun of his giant, compensating-for-something katana in the way that loud, teenage grease monkeys do.

Now all she’s got are some rusted swords, as though they can ever make up for their wielder.

She pats down her shorts and stands up, about to continue her patrol.

That’s when she sees it for the first time.

The shadow beneath his katana moves, lurching, a thing pulling itself out of the darkness. It looks— _stupid_ , and tiny, and dumb. It’s so _little_ , Rikku realizes, slowly drawing out her daggers, just a little bug with enormous yellow eyes and floppy antennae and big, clumsy feet. But then it lunges, its feelers blindly jerking and groping for the warm blood under her skin, moving like a starving roach. There’s nothing in its bulging eyes but single-minded hunger. With a disgusted yelp, Rikku slices it in two and it splatters open all over the Genji Blade with a greasy _squelch_.

Instead of pyreflies whispering into the air, a hot shimmering _heart_ lights up her face, lights up Auron’s glade where a hundred yellow eyes flicker open and swivel towards Rikku, and then the heart vanishes upwards and crashes them in dim moonlight once more.

Distantly, as she clutches her daggers in a shaking death-grip, Rikku imagines Valefor swooping in, carrying them all off to wherever the fayth are living now.

But the aeons are gone; they had killed them.

Now the darkness is here.

* * *

“There were things we had no more use for,” Rikku says, looking up at the perpetual moon over Traverse Town, hanging over fizzy-green lights and sloping rooftops, “so we let them die. The fayth, Home, Macalania Woods.”

A little bit of sea-salt drips off her popsicle stick. Next to her, Auron is quiet.

“And you.”

**Author's Note:**

> tysh: damn  
> rud cred: hot shit  
> kad ujan rana: get over here  
> kuuthekrd: goodnight


End file.
